Anybody who really knows me knows my growing-up years were a bit tumultuous. My dad was a troubled alcoholic battling some pretty horrific demons. I was a painfully shy only child who morphed into a painfully shy, self-destructive and severely depressed teenager. I remember writing in my journal around the age of 15 that I absolutely would not make it past the age of 19. I'd planned to end it as soon as I found the courage because if what I'd experienced thus far was "life" why bother living much longer? It was all so terribly sad - how unhappy I was growing up and how little desire I had to be happy. In my defense, I think I just didn't know how. There was very little happiness in my home, if any, despite my poor mother's best efforts. (If it weren't for her, I'm sure I'd be some nameless drug-addicted skeletal woman living in an alley somewhere.)
But I digress. My dad took his own life a week prior to Christmas of 1998 and a few days afterwards, my mom was cleaning out the entertainment center and found a red spiral bound notebook shoved into one of the lower cabinets. Turns out, he'd been keeping a journal for a few months - an extended suicide note, if you will. She'd made photocopied versions for family and a friend or two. She made the mistake of loaning the original notebook to his sister who still has not returned it. So I have one of the photocopied books.

For years, I've been wanting to scan all the pages and make something nicer of it. Our relationship was always strained and difficult but I thought he deserved that much at least. I also thought it may be therapeutic and a decent way to end that chapter of my life. Unfortunately, I never felt mentally capable of such an undertaking...until recently. So a few months back I took the first step in scanning all the pages and then, I don't know...became busy with other things? Forgot? But a few weeks ago I was contacted by a cousin of my dad's - someone I've never known or met and we've been talking about our family, all of the tragedies, damage, anguish and I suddenly remembered this was something I never finished. So I set this weekend aside and promised myself I'd get it done. And now it is.

I'm not sure if anyone but me would find this interesting in any way and if not, that's certainly okay. I didn't do this for anyone else, after all.

"Average reader will think at this point that I'm asking for faith - nothing could be further from the truth! I ask only for wisdom and the ability to use it - for the future...upon which all depends, without which all is lost."

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I met Melissa, this red-lipped, beautifully inked, raven-haired woman less than 6 months ago. One day, nearly two months ago she confessed her love to me for Banksy’s balloon girl. She said she was dying to recreate it in a photograph for someone special to her, but wanted a snowy-filled backdrop. She wanted that vibrant red heart balloon to pop off a clean white setting.

My husband and I recently participated in an Atlas Obscura event to get a peek inside the Wonder View Tower in Genoa, Colorado. I'd actually never heard of this place before a friend sent me a link for the AO tour event only days prior to the meet-up. Needless to say, I was hooked and immediately bought tickets.

"Looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker’s last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world."

“Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Familes are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.” ―Diane Setterfield

The trip was of course, wonderful, until the last 30 minutes of the drive home when Serenica's engine began stalling on us whenever we'd drop beneath a certain speed (hoping it's a minor fix!). Fortunately, after stalling out on several occasions and getting it restarted again, she died right inside our RV storage lot gate and wouldn't turn over.

I probably don't need to say here that I absolutely could not have predicted that it would have been 14 more months before we were ready to post the After shots, but I'm going to say it anyway: I had no idea how long this beast would actually take us to complete.

And then a woman appeared on the barren land, with seeds in her teeth, and each limb a root in search of earth to plant themselves. And then a woman appeared on the barren land, and not from the rib of any man, and not for his pleasure or to come to his aid, for without woman, there is no life, and there is no man.